a historical sketch of the introduction and development of what he calls the 'sacerdotal' ideas and phraseology; and it is, in effect, a serious argument against the 'sacerdotalism' of which he speaks.

In such a sketch, or argument, everything turns upon the question what exactly is meant by 'sacerdotalism.' And I must submit that that which Bishop Lightfoot is found to understand by it is just that which the sacerdotal language, in its Christian acceptation, does not and cannot really mean. But the misunderstanding, if misunderstanding it be, is one which illustrates, with damning effectiveness, the tendency towards error which is too truly suggested by what I must call the misproportion of the unreformed language.

What does Bishop Lightfoot understand sacerdotalism to mean? He begins by a definition and distinction. 'The word "priest" has two different senses. In the one it is a synonym for presbyter or elder, and designates the minister who presides over and instructs a Christian congregation: in the other it is equivalent to the Latin "sacerdos," the Greek iepeús, or the Hebrew in, the offerer of sacrifices, who also performs other mediatorial offices between God and man. . . The word will be used throughout this essay . . . in the latter sense only, so that priestly will be equivalent to "sacerdotal" or "hieratic";' p. 184; cp. 243 n. In speaking of sacerdotalism, I assume the term to have essentially the same force as when applied to the Jewish priesthood. . . . Sacerdotal phraseology was certainly so used as to imply a substantial identity of character with the Jewish priesthood, i. e. to designate the Christian minister as one who offers sacrifices and makes atonement.' Compare again the comment upon the word 'sacerdotal' implied in the opening paragraph of the essay: 'Above all, it [the kingdom of Christ] has no sacerdotal system. It interposes no sacrificial tribe or class between God and man, by whose intervention alone God is reconciled and man forgiven.' It is plain

from these passages that Bishop Lightfoot has (1) made the capital mistake of taking the Mosaic use of the words 'priesthood,' &c. as the truth and true standard of their meaning, and measuring, by that, their meaning in the Church of Christ: and (2) that he has gone on from this initial and fatal-mistake, to allow himself to consider (a) the sacrifices so spoken of as things in themselves independent and absolute-as actual offerings of atonement; and so (b) the priests as a class really intervening as indispensable intermediaries, between Christians and their God. Thus he speaks of priests as a 'sacerdotal caste" in some exclusive sense' (to which the idea of his standing to represent the congregation is regarded as antithetical 2), as an exclusive priesthood "'; of their claim to 'sacerdotal privileges' and 'sacerdotal sanctity 4' (phrases which are not explained); of their claim to 'obedience' on pain of profanity and sacrilege; and again, by implication at least, of their being sacerdotal, and the Eucharist a sacerdotal act, 'in the same sense in which the Jewish priesthood and the Jewish sacrifices were sacerdotal'; of their 'vicarial' character-regarded as antithetical to being 'representative"'; of the interposing of the priest 'between God and man in such a way that direct communication with God is superseded on the one hand, and that his own mediation becomes indispensable on the other.' And he not unnaturally concludes by the position that the words themselves can only be retained 'in a wider and looser sense' than that which his argument has treated throughout as if it were the one that most properly belonged to them.

Now I must submit that at least half of the objections which these different statements imply, are at once as mere cobwebs swept out of sight by the conception which it was my endeavour to emphasize in the third chapter, according to which the Christian ministry is not a substituted inter

mediary-still less an atoning mediator-between God and lay people; but it is rather the representative and organ of the whole body, in the exercise of prerogatives and powers which belong to the body as a whole. It is ministerially empowered to wield, as the body's organic representative, the powers which belong to the body, but which the body cannot wield except through its own organs duly fitted for the purpose. What is duly done by Christian Ministers, it is not so much that they do it, in the stead, or for the sake, of the whole; but rather that the whole does it by and through them. The Christian Priest does not offer an atoning sacrifice on behalf of the Church it is rather the Church through his act that, not so much offers an atonement,' as 'is identified upon earth with the one heavenly offering of the atonement of Christ.'

In the light of this one great principle, as I conceive, all that the Bishop says about a sacerdotal caste, its exclusiveness, its intervention, its sacerdotal privileges and sanctity, its demand of obedience on pain of sacrilege, almost, or quite, totally disappears. All that is said about atonement, mediation, sacrifice, is, at least, enormously modified. But this is not enough. It is necessary to examine a little further where the truth exactly lies about the fundamental words 'priesthood' and 'sacrifice'; and in so doing to show how hopeless is the position which, assuming that these words have their true and absolute meaning in the Levitical law, makes their meaning in that the measure by which to try the correctness of their meaning elsewhere. I pass then from all thought of the interpretations or misinterpretations-to which the unreformed language, whether popular or official, have been, in fact, unjustly or justly, liable, to the more fundamental question, what do these words which are consecrated at least by well-nigh immemorial Christian usage-what do 'sacrifice' and 'priesthood' really and rightly mean?

II.

I said just now that it would be a superficial following of Scripture which would lead men to strike out such words as priest, priesthood, and sacrifice, from the familiar vocabulary of the Christian Church. It would not only be superficial; it would be profoundly and fatally wrong. The Church of Christ, as exhibited in the New Testament, is priestly and sacrificial in substance, as the Church of the Old Testament was only in figure. Mosaic priesthood, with its sacrifices, was no more, on the one hand, a non-significant, than it was, on the other, a complete or substantial, thing. It sketched out, it led up to, it enacted parabolically, that which transcended itself, that in which alone its detached, external, and symbolic suggestions found their unity and fullness. All priesthood, all sacrifice, is summed up in the Person of Christ.

It is one of the capital mistakes of those who discuss Christian priesthood, a mistake which is answerable for some of the most deplorable conclusions-to go back, for the standard of the 'true' or 'literal' or 'proper meaning of the words Sacrifice and Priest, to what they meant in the Old Testament, or what they meant in the ancient pagan world, or in the mouths of those who may be supposed to have first devised the terms. Nothing could be more fatally misleading. Not one of these, Pagan or Israelite, ever attained, ever so much as conceived, the true idea of Sacrifice or Priest. They were like prophets, who did not understand what they prophesied. They never adequately realized the import of their own acts or words. Considering where the real

meaning of their acts lay, it was wholly impossible that they should have grasped it. No, there is one standard only, and measure, of the reality of the meaning of these words; and that is, their meaning in the Person of Christ.

Now the Person of Christ does not pass away from the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ. The Spirit of Christ is the Breath of the Life of the Church. Whatever Christ is, the Church is; as reflecting, nay, in a real sense even as being, Himself. If we want to see in what

the priesthood of the Church consists, or what the word priesthood ultimately means, we must examine first what it means in the Person of Christ.

Wherein, then, is Christ a Priest? The answer perhaps will be that He is a Priest in that He offered sacrifice; and that the sacrifice which He offered was the sacrifice of Himself. This answer of course is correct, as far as it goes. But there are one or two directions in which it seems that, in order to be anything like an adequate presentation of the truth, the answer needs not a little supplementing.

First, then, it is of some importance to ask exactly when, or how, was this priestly sacrifice offered by Him? Does it mean the moment of Calvary? I do not stay now to dwell upon the thought-true and valuable though it is that His entire life in mortal flesh was a sacrifice, a dying, a crucifying, so that Calvary, however supreme as a culmination, was a culmination of, rather than a contradiction to, what the life before had meant. But assuming that, upon the side of suffering, the sacrifice of His death may be taken to be at least the culminationperhaps rather the consummation of the sacrifice of His preceding life; still, is it perfectly adequate to point to Calvary, as, in the fullest sense, the consummation in Him of all that is meant by sacrifice?

It is to be remembered that, even under the Mosaic law, however indispensable death might be to sacrifice, death was not in itself the consummation of sacrifice. The

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